By Charles Nwaguoji and Merit Ibe
The president of Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe, has highlighted steps to achieve a virile real sector growth in Nigeria.
The association stated that the business environment is becoming more hostile and unbeatable, maintaining that the horrible business environment is being compounded by the escalating exchange rates, and forex scarcity, coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gwadabe stated this at the 2020 Commerce And Industry Correspondents Association of Nigeria (CICAN) End of the Year Workshop, Titled, “Effects of COVID-19 on the Real Sector/SMEs Financing”.
According to him, one of the biggest challenges hindering the sector is the border closure and multiple taxation. He advised that for Nigeria to come out of recession, the government should remove all multiple taxes levied on manufacturers, saying that the economic managers should also encourage manufacturers by way of formulating investment friendly policies.
“The government should grant tax holiday to manufacturers during this period of general economic hardship if we must come out of recession. They should think of incentives to manufacturers and not exploiting or punishing them with levies and taxes. The government should make low single digit loans available with less bureaucracy if the country must experience growth,” he advocated.
He also added that lifting tax burden of the manufacturers will help in creating more employment, thereby lifting jobless youths out of the street, calling on the government to develop policies that would encourage competitiveness of the Nigerian manufacturers.
His words, “Government should think of tangible grants to the manufacturers as well as non interest loans to attract more visitors into the manufacturing sector. The government should warn its agencies to desist from seeing manufacturers as avenues to make money for themselves.”
He added that manufacturers are not making profit due to massive infrastructural deficit that has plagued the nation over the years.
“We generate power by ourselves and the cost is unbearable. What about road rehabilitation, majority lost our manufactured goods and raw materials to bad roads, our vehicles and vans breakdown on the daily bases as a result of the poor condition of our roads,” he added.
On his part, Acting Director-General of MAN, Ambrose Oruche, said the policies formulated to drive manufacturing in the country are not supportive, expressing his doubt if the sector would be out of doldrums by 1st quarter of 2021.